Fall 2015

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Month: October 2015

…Is actually not Spanish. Don’t get me wrong, I love the language and my teacher this year but it’s just not my thing. Neither are the sciences really! I have always had a penchant for theater and the liberal arts in general. However, due to my school being… special, I was not allowed to take Theater class this year. So I must default on my other favorites which are just as good! Just not as good.

WHY CAN’T WE HAVE DRAMA???

English is one of my top favorite classes. I love to write, as you yourself can tell by the one hundred and three word count so far. I have loved to write and read since I was a little girl. My mother did raise me correctly, after all. Essays are one of my favorite things to write, actually. [BUZZ FEED: HIRE ME!YOUR ARTICLES COULD PRACTICALLY BE WRITTEN BY A SIXTH GRADER AT THIS RATE!]

OOOOH SICK BUURN not really…

Ah… ahem. But my mother helped nurture my love for the subject of English. I always felt proud when I finished a difficult book or wrote like one of my favorite authors who she liked. Now I love reading on my own, trying to find better and cooler things to read. I like romance but not trashy romance novels. When it is cultivated through the narrative with the utmost care… sighs. My ambition is to be a writer so it would be best for me to pass all my English classes.

A love for English really will help you in high school. Last year, the whole of the ninth grade was forced to write an essay about a mover and shaker in world history from the names listed. Now I chose Joan of Arc not knowing how much I would fall in love with her. This girl was the fiercest warrior I had ever read about! Then I had to write an essay about it. This is the point where most mortals would start hating the fact that they had to write and provide evidence but I got more excited. The essay ended up being around six pages long (not counting the works cited page), but I was all done while people were still working on their second body paragraph! I spent so many class periods just looking through it for any different turns of phrase I could use to make it sound better. Now the essay was getting graded by three different teachers. But, I am the literary goddess so I got full marks back from each one. MLA formatting? On point. Historical accuracy? Does two plus two equal four? Writing style? Have you seen this blog?

But there is more to life than English. So what else could a nerd like me possibly like? Well, history of course. Not American history (which, depending on the teacher, is either about our glorious democracy or the actual genocide and racism our founding fathers perpetuated), but Global history. I did not think that I would love any time period other than the Victorian era, but in finding the Heian dynasty I found my dreams met with reality. Not only was I learning a couple of dates and names, I was learning cultures, philosophies, heck even new art styles! Now it helped that my teacher was one of my all time favorites, but still. History gives me the opportunity to see how different each time period and each person is. The struggle my ancestors went through that eventually lead to me being able to type on a computer about my feelings!

It’s hard to pin down specific events where history has helped me. A myriad of memories pop up when I think about historical accuracy (shouting at the TV mostly). But it really comes in handy in Model UN. Knowing the histories between countries makes the experience of “negotiations” feel real. Even if at the end of the day you are simply in a club that gets to skimp out on school to go to a college and debate with mostly white private school kids. But still, when I was pretending to be a delegate from Japan, it really helped knowing the history Japan had with other countries (isolationist for awhile, then a thriving capitalist country) as well as with women (complicated). And while I did work closely with Russia, I spent a bit more time with my true capitalist ally, the United States.

While English and Global history probably will not help at a construction site or in “da club”, I don’t exactly plan on spending copious amounts of times in those places once I’m grown up. What I really wish to be is a writer, so excelling in English is a must. History really helps when it comes to putting things in perspective or general accuracy. I mean, I’d sound like a fool saying something like Shakespeare lived in the eighteen hundreds along with Machiavelli and Billy the Kid (I mean, Michael Scott pulled that off but he added magic and immortality so that’s different). I also generally sound smarter and more well rounded/smarter when I compare things of this day to items of the “glorious” past.

Now I shall leave you with this: Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. And to know history you’ve got to read it. So stay in drugs and don’t do school! Have a wonderful year, my dears!